Image registration is the process of overlaying two or more images of, typically, the same scene or content. Such images can be taken at different times, from different viewpoints, and/or by different sensors. Alternatively, registration can be used as a tool for comparison of the same image after it has passed through a physical process for example. Image registration is a significant step in image analysis tasks in which information is determined from the combination of various data sources such as in image fusion, change detection, and multichannel image restoration. Typically, registration is used in remote sensing (multispectral classification, environmental monitoring, change detection, image mosaicing, weather forecasting, creating super-resolution images, integrating information into geographic information systems (GIS)), in medicine (combining computer tomography (CT) and NMR data to obtain more complete information about a patient for example, treatment verification and so on), in cartography (map updating), and in computer vision (target localization, automatic quality control), to name a few. Typically, image registration proceeds by geometrically aligning two images—a reference image and a target image. Accordingly, any differences between the images which have been introduced due to different imaging or processing conditions for example can be detected. Typically, registration techniques operate locally on images to be registered, thereby reducing the overall or global accuracy of any resulting registration. Such techniques are also often slow.